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by Jane Nordberg

Below: The cover of a cartoon book created by Sonny Eliot and fellow POWs at Stalag Luft 1 near Barth, Germany. (All photos courtesy of Michigan’s Military and Space Heroes Museum, unless

otherwise noted. Above photo courtesy of the U.S. Air Force.)

Left, top and bottom: Sonny Eliot, in uniform and out, had a recognizable face throughout much of Michigan.28 Michigan History • May/Jun 2018

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Born Marwin Eliot Schlossberg on December 5, 1920, in Detroit, Sonny Eliot received his appropriate

nickname from his eldest sister, Anne, who oversaw the Schlossberg household while their parents, Latvian-American immigrants Jacob and Jeanette, ran the family’s hardware store on Hastings Street. Eliot graduated from Detroit’s Central High School in 1939, where he developed his chops in physical comedy by captaining the all-male cheerleading team of three and got his first taste of playwriting and broadcasting as a member of Central’s Radio Unit.

“I grew up in the golden age of radio, a marvelous medium—the theater of the mind,” Eliot once quipped. “There was no television at the time. There was no ice—it hadn’t been invented yet. Dirt was just in the process of being made.”

Following his graduation from high school, Eliot attended Wayne University, now Wayne State University, to study acting and broadcasting. He also began taking flying lessons at Wayne County Airport, now Detroit Metropolitan Airport. In a competitive

examination, he earned a place with the federal Civilian Pilot Training Program, where he flew a Piper J-3 Cub plane. Finishing in the top 10 percent in the class earned him ground school credits and, more important, gave him 40 hours of flying time in the eyes of the federal government, which was gradually preparing the country to enter World War II.

Eliot received his private pilot’s license in 1941, shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor

Sonny Eliot was a beloved radio and television weathercaster in Metro Detroit for more than 60 years, becoming a household name and a Detroit institution. Delivering his forecasts with a quick wit, corny puns, and a penchant for small towns in the Upper Peninsula, he was a fan favorite and regularly rated at the top of numerous Detroit personality popularity polls. Prior to his longstanding career in media, however, Eliot served as a bomber pilot in World War II, being shot down over Germany and held in a prisoner of war camp for 16 months—an experience that helped shape events for the rest of his life.

thrust the United States into the global conflict. “When the war broke out in ’41, we were all stricken with great patriotism,” he remembered. “We immediately went down to enlist because we were afraid the war wouldn’t last long enough [and] we would not get a chance to get into combat. It’s a common malady for people caught up in wartime.”

With his schooling interrupted, Eliot did not have the prerequisite two years of college needed to become a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Forces. But, by passing a qualifying exam, he entered into the Army as a private in March 1942. After basic and advanced army training and specialized pilot’s training, Eliot received his pilot’s wings and was sent to Salt Lake City to train with four-engine B-24 bombers.

“I was supposed to fly my own airplane over to the Pacific, but the Air [Forces] lost a great many airplanes in Europe at that time,” Eliot recalled. “The Luftwaffe was going great guns over there, and they needed my B-24 for transport instead of a combat plane. So instead of flying [my plane], I went over on the Queen Elizabeth into England and became a member of the 8th Air Force.”

Eliot, a young aviator during World War II.

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Shot Down Over

EuropeEliot flew 16 missions over western

Europe as a B-24 bomber pilot with the 8th Air Force in 1943 and early 1944, eventually rising to the rank of captain. During a daylight raid near Frankfurt in central Germany in the winter of 1944, his squadron came under heavy antiaircraft artillery fire and was swarmed by enemy fighter planes.

“We were to bomb a components parts factory in Gotha,” Eliot recalled. “There was a great deal of flak and fighter cover. In our group we had 28 planes, and in one pass they knocked down 6 of them, of which I was one. They hit the engines, they hit the wing, and we were on fire. There was no way in the world I could keep up with the squadron, no way. [The plane] was in danger of blowing up on me.”

Eliot and his surviving crewmen parachuted to earth, where they landed safely in a snowdrift. The airmen were captured by several German farmers, who held them for two days while arguing over whether to shoot them or hang them. Finally, the group was rounded up by Nazi SS troops, shoved into a boxcar, and given some food scraps. Ten days later, the men arrived at the Dulag Luft prisoner of war (POW) camp in Frankfort.

There, Eliot was kept in solitary confinement for six days. “We had just begun to use radar, and my captors thought that me, being the pilot of the lead plane, I must have the inside dope,” he said. Eventually, the Germans became convinced that Eliot had not piloted the lead plane and had no relevant knowledge of radar. The interrogation over, he was transferred to the Stalag Luft 1 POW camp near Barth, Germany, in February 1944.

Life as a Prisoner

of WarFrom there on, life developed

into a bad dream. Sonny recalled that it was like something out of an Errol Flynn movie—“only Errol Flynn would have escaped,” he later quipped. While Eliot did not count himself as particularly religious, he made no effort to hide his Jewish origins, with one exception. He lied once, telling the Nazis he was Lutheran because “that seemed an appropriate thing to do.” The Nazis caught on anyway, scrawling “Jude” across his POW identity card.

The treatment varied from time to time, from place to place, and from guard to guard, but the worst of it was the hunger and the boredom. The Red Cross helped with the former by sending packages containing toothbrushes that could be traded for cigarettes, which was the medium of exchange with the guards. “Cigarettes could buy anything—a chocolate bar or enough food to eat for a week.”

As for the boredom, Eliot’s job in the camp was to keep up hope. “We had artists, writers, actors…there were a great many talented people in [the] prison camp, as you’ll find most anywhere. Everyone did what they did best.” Eliot, ever the cheerleader, became the camp morale officer. “Energies become funneled into one direction when you have no other outlet. Without a job to go to, without responsibilities, one could funnel all energy into entertainment.

I would put on little shows and plays—talk about a captive audience! We had some damned good shows.”

Eliot documented those “Schlossberg Follies” in a thick journal he kept while in captivity. More of a scrapbook, it contained not only his poems and written thoughts over a seemingly endless term in the camp but also prison notices, German propaganda, photographs, and bawdy limericks and poems all heavily illustrated by a talented fellow prisoner. Eliot’s journal also included letters received from home, which began arriving as soon as the Schlossberg family learned he had not, as they had originally thought, died in a fiery plane crash.

“Sonny Darling,” his sister Anne wrote on May 11, 1944, “The mailman rang and rang the bell this morning with your card, he was so excited—as for us, we were so happy to see your handwriting, we laughed and cried and even kissed the card. So happy that you are well and unhurt.” The letter arrived on August 10, 1944, almost three months to the day after it was written.

Images of Eliot’s “Schlossberg Follies” as shown in his

wartime journal. (All photos on this spread courtesy of the

Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University.)

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Eliot promoting a play he was in at Wayne University following his return

to the United States, c. 1946-1947.

Eliot’s description of Barth, Germany, where he was held as a prisoner of war. 31Historical Society of Michigan

Bolstered by Anne’s letters and packages, as well as by BBC broadcasts heard on an illicit radio reporting that the war was winding down, Eliot kept writing, acting, and cheerleading until the spring of 1945, when the Russian Red Army liberated the camp and the prisoners were finally freed. Eliot and his fellow airmen went out just about the way they came in, being loaded into B-17 bombers and flown to Rheims, France. From Rheims, they were

moved by truck to an American repatriation camp in the French seaport town of LeHavre. About 100,000 men were crammed into the camp, nicknamed “Lucky Strike,” which had been built to house 30,000.

With an enormous lack of identification causing an indefinite processing backlog and no ships available to transport the men home to the United States, Eliot first found a pay phone to let his family know he was alright and then went over the hill for six

weeks of revelry in Paris. Upon his release from Stalag Luft 1, he weighed a scant 90 pounds. “It was such a mess trying to get home that I decided to take a month and make up for all the good food and drink I missed during my year and a half in the prison camp.”

Coming Home to

Postwar DetroitFollowing the end of the war,

Eliot returned to Detroit and re-entered Wayne University to complete his degree. While at Wayne, he penned several scripts, one of which he sold to The Lone Ranger network program. He hosted a university radio show and worked in his parents’ hardware store to help his family’s finances. He also continued to fly a Cessna 210 plane at City Airport. Upon graduation, he abandoned the name of Marwin Schlossberg and became forevermore known as Sonny Eliot.

With several acting and broadcasting roles in various radio soap operas and dramas under his belt, Eliot was hired at WWJ-TV, Michigan’s first television station, in 1947. Initially, he appeared on a variety of programs, including children’s shows, sportscasts, and comedy-variety shows. In 1956, he became the station’s weathercaster,

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32 Michigan History • May/Jun 2018

family.” Changing temperatures in Hollywood? “One of the few places where they put pretty frames in pictures instead of pretty pictures in frames.” Jacobsville in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, “a town so small their dogcatcher is a vicious cat,” got a tweak, and Eliot lifted the Keweenaw Peninsula off the map and performed an exaggerated double take at the sight of a raunchy message hidden there by the stagehands. If it was cloudy and chilly in Detroit, it was “that CLILLY sort of weather,” he said.

Viewers tuned in for Eliot’s four-minute banter at 6:15, 7:15, and 11:25 p.m. each weekday evening and his regular spot on WWJ Radio at 6:25 a.m. weekday mornings. Station ratings quickly skyrocketed, and Sonny Eliot became a household name. At age 41, he married his longtime sweetheart, East Detroit Schools music teacher Annette Gaertner, and together they settled into a newly built luxury apartment in Lafayette Park. By the mid-1960s, Eliot had established himself as Detroit’s top television personality.

An Everlasting

Legacy

In 1972, WWJ made Eliot the station’s public relations director. In the coming decades, his face was everywhere. He emceed hundreds of events, roasts, and toasts, and he was a particularly easy touch at fund-raisers for causes dear to his heart—including the annual “I Care About Detroit” bike-a-thon and a Fash Bash raising $15,000 for Detroit Youtheatre, where he outshone Gordie Howe by donning a banana-yellow knit suit. Eliot also fostered a genuine fondness for the Detroit Zoo, where he hosted a weekly program for 17 years, and the J. L. Hudson Thanksgiving Day Parade, which he co-hosted with his wife, Annette, for two decades.

The consummate entertainer, Eliot participated in numerous publicity stunts. He tamed circus cats in a cage, fought a rodeo bull, played poker with Amarillo Slim, and boxed Joe Frazier. When the Robin Hood flour mill was being razed to make way for the Renaissance Center on the Detroit Riverfront, Eliot rode the wrecking ball.

But his most publicized stunt was walking the high wire with famed aerialist Karl Wallenda, 45 feet in the air above Olympia Stadium’s concrete floor and without a net below. “A complete misunderstanding on my part,” Eliot said, having assumed the wire would be only a few feet off the ground for the few minutes it took to get a camera shot. “When Karl agreed to do it, for real, I realized he was in as much danger as I was of falling and I didn’t have the heart to back out.” When the event aired in October of 1972, Sonny Eliot became the first broadcast or press personality ever to dare walking the high wire with Wallenda.

On July 22, 1978, WWJ became WDIV (“Where Detroit is Vital”) under new management. Eliot’s new bosses were not so enamored with his playful delivery. On March 3, 1980, after three decades with the station, he moved to Channel 2, where he received a warm welcome from Vice President Bob McBride, who promised to let Eliot “do his thing.”

The move stunned fans, who wrote hundreds of letters in support. “Your resignation is Channel 4’s loss,” said a woman from Clarkston. “You are like an old friend to us.” A family of 16 from Lake Orion wrote a scathing letter to Channel 4. “We were shocked with dismay upon hearing that Sonny Eliot is leaving Channel 4….Your attempted disciplining of Sonny, such as restricting his comments on the Upper Peninsula towns and exuberant chalk-tossing,

a role aided by his wartime experiences. “Weather is a prime factor in staying alive while flying,” he said.

But Eliot didn’t start out with a shtick. His aviation training had been serious, and thus his early reports on Channel 4 mentioned isobars, isotherms, and 500 millibar charts. He reported the weather that way for about four months, until he got bored with the same numbers day after day and figured his audience was probably getting bored too. One day, he threw in a joke, and it got a chuckle. The next day, the same. Viewers began taking notice, and the ratings improved.

“Every station had the same data,” Eliot recalled. “Where TV reports differ is in the interpretation and presentation of their individual weatherman. Make it interesting, and people pay attention. And that’s how it happened—what I call a ‘light-hearted look at the weather.’”

If there was news of a storm in the Carolinas, it would be “busier than a one-armed pickpocket with a large

Weatherman Sonny Eliot in action.

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we take as a personal affront…. Through Sonny, our five children, now grown, learned more about the names and locations of Michigan’s small towns and villages than they did in school. Sonny has done much for Detroit. We feel if he ran for mayor, he would be elected. In closing, where Sonny goes, we go.”

And go they did. By June of 1980, popular Detroit Free Press columnist Bob Talbert, a regular lunch partner of Eliot’s, reported a significant ratings surge at Channel 2. Talbert also reported that, in retaliation, when Sonny requested his 17 years of “At the Zoo” tapes from Channel 4 that December, his request was referred to the station’s lawyers and subsequently denied.

Eliot retired from broadcasting in 2010, which allowed for more time to travel the world with his wife. Their trips included a stop in Barth, Germany, where he showed his bride of 50 years a plaque near the camp where he was imprisoned so many years earlier. Sonny died peacefully at home in 2012 at the age of 91, and Annette followed in 2014.

Throughout his life, Eliot earned many accolades and honors, including the Michigan Association of Broadcasters Excellence Award,

the Sloan Award for his traffic safety tips, and awards from both the American Legion and American Meteorological Society. He was inducted into the Michigan Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2002 and the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame in 2005. Of all the citations he received, however, his most prized was “Sonny Eliot Day” in the Upper Peninsula town of Engadine (or “Enga-ringa-dinga-dine,” as he called it repeatedly), where, though out of broadcast range, the townspeople were grateful for the many Detroit tourists spurred to explore the town by viewing Eliot’s broadcasts.

Sonny Eliot was so much more, perhaps foreshadowed in a notation in the 1939 Central High School yearbook: “The cheerleader must have grace and rhythm, but most importantly, his mental attitude must always be one of optimism; he must always be able to see the bright side of every situation.”

After surviving the harrowing wartime experience of being shot down over Germany and held captive as a prisoner of war, Eliot returned to Detroit to build a career and bring smiles to viewers across Michigan.

Above: Eliot posing before his display at Michigan’s Military and Space Heroes Museum in Frankenmuth. Right: Eliot’s own account of his wartime service. (The name “Marvin” is a variation of his birthname, “Marwin.”)

Three of Eliot’s military decorations earned during

World War II (from left to right): the Air Medal,

the Distinguished Flying Cross, and the Purple

Heart. (Images courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)

For decades, he rejected numerous offers from big-city stations with deep pockets, electing to stay where he had become a legend and a hometown hero. “I was born here, I grew up here, I’ve been here a long, long time,” he said. “These are the people I know and the people who know me; Detroit is where I belong.” A

Jane Nordberg’s freelance work has appeared in Michigan History magazine, the Historical Society of Michigan’s Chronicle, Lake Superior Magazine, and a variety of regional and specialized print and online publications.

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